Our Professional Photographer

John Morley
John has shot more pictures of people than he can count. He set out as a professional photographer in 1972, when he was 15 and still at school; he got his parents to drive him to weddings he shot! He’s been at his Dorset studio for 19 years, regularly shoots portfolios for aspiring models and runs training courses – the perfect man to teach Luke the basics of studio portraiture.

Our Apprentice

Luke Bayliss
Luke lives in Bournemouth and works in merchandising for Tesco. He got into photography three years ago, and has always fancied a go at trying his hand at taking professional portraits – so we set him up with a fully equipped studio, two models, the services of a makeup artist, and our professional photographer.

Technique Assessment

Manual at f/11
“You need to have your DSLR switched to manual exposure mode (M) when using studio lights,” John explains. “The actual exposure is controlled by varying the output of the flash unit. To simplify things, I use f/11 for 90 per cent of my shots. This gets enough depth of field and ensures the best quality from the lens. The shutter speed is then set to 1/125 sec to ensure that the flash doesn’t have any problem synchronising with the shutter opening.”

Get a grey card reading
“Don’t leave your camera set to its default Auto White Balance mode when you shoot in a studio,” cautions John. “A consistent manual setting is best, as it enables you to batch-process your images more quickly. If you’re not familiar with the lights, take a Manual White Balance reading using a commercially available grey card or a piece of white paper.”